I get so caught up in the def poet beat
that I become deaf to what my words are supposed to mean.
I ask you to listen to these rhymes in hope
of times that they are worth something, anything,
worth more than the penny it cost to print them,
more than the soul it cost to make them.

But what’s the point if the manner of the matter was made,
to mean something meaningful in a time where no one cares
if you know how to rhyme.
But it’s the last door to the outside and I don’t know
if I have time to carve the key out of the skin
I press these bladed thoughts to.

A few heartbeats more and I might have something worth asking for.
Freedom,
to be,
to live,
Let me live more closely to this door to the outside world,
where consequences and results are meant to blur into

reinforcements that are either positive or negative,
depending upon the inflection of the perspective given
from those who don’t matter much,
except for a title that we think makes them something we can’t touch.
And I spin fine, rhyming to pass the time
until the executioner’s scythe is sharpened just right,

to slice off the last bit of color
that accidentally splashed on me while I was on the assembly line.
Until the passed mistakes of my past life
catch up to me in a fine spectacle of she said, she said diatribes
that do nothing more than discredit the fact that my hopes aren’t blind.
I guess they are.

I smacked her so hard to get her off my back
that I sacrificed all that I stood for, in hopes of winning love back.
But it was a dangerous time, fueled by misguided rage
and played like a fiddle on a warm summer stage.
You can only give power to those who take, so I give you the power of my mistake.

I was Victor’s monster in the daylight.
Hatred slipped into every fiber of my being
as I followed blindly what is right. I burned away all that I had become,
in order to shape myself into something Victor would be proud of.
Useless, mistaken, foolish beyond measure.
Until I found the door.

It’s easy to get lost in these def poetics beats,
beating blindly, beating unsightly, into submission,
but I found the key already in the lock,
and although my my message isn’t ready for admission
it’s time to burn the rest of the blocks.
And say fuck you, to anyone else who dares to knock.